Getting to On-Time Software Projects

“We grew up,” says Verily Chief Executive Officer Andy Conrad. The middle-aged geneticist has adopted the Silicon Valley T-shirt and-flip-flops wardrobe of eternal youth, but he’s given up on a lot of the jargon, including Google’s onetime favorite word. Like some other Alphabet holdings, 500-staffer Verily has stopped talking about industry-changing “moonshots.” What next generation technology requires in practical terms is “setting the goal and then getting down to the day to-day practical drudgery,” he says. “If you examine the real moonshot closely, you’ll see a dude whose job is to rivet and a lady whose job is to do some wiring.” Bloomberg Businessweek, April 24, 2017. Downsizing Google’s dream.

The problem was, I perceived, that too many people thought a moonshot was the same as swinging for the bleachers. The level of efforts are in different universes. The only way to turn a moonshot into a swing for the bleachers is a new and novel insight that no one else has probably thought of before. Also, like any swing for the bleachers, it simply might not connect nor make it that far.

Is your project a moonshot but with the acknowledgement that it will include lots of practical drudgery?

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